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Greymouth Star
Opinion/Features
4 - Monday, March 9, 2015
We appreciate the value of the Letters to the Editor
column as a public forum for West Coasters and
welcome your opinion and suggestions.
Letters may be submitted by post, fax or e-mail and
must include your name, address, phone number
and — except for e-mails — your signature. Noms
de plume are not accepted.
Please keep your letters honest, respectful and
within 300 words. Letter writers will generally not
be published more often than weekly. The Editor
reserves the right to edit or not publish letters,
especially those that are offensive or too long.
Post to PO Box 3, Greymouth, fax to 768 6205 or
e-mail to editor@greystar.co.nz
uLetters to the editor
1074 - Pope Gregory VII declares all married
Roman Catholic priests to be excommunicated.
1796 - Future French emperor Napoleon
Bonaparte marries Josephine de Beauharnais,
widow of a former French officer executed
during the revolution.
1831 - The French Foreign Legion is founded
by King Louis Philippe with its headquarters
in Algeria.
1864 - In the US Civil War,
General Ulysses S Grant is
appointed commander-in-chief of
the Union armies.
1903 - Ten die when Cyclone
Leonta hits Townsville, North
Queensland.
1924 - Italy annexes the
independent city of Fiume but
abandons claims to Yugoslavia’s Dalmatian
coast.
1932 - Emperor Pu Yi, who abdicated
the Chinese throne in 1912, is installed as
president of Japanese-controlled Manchuria.
1942 - Japanese complete conquest of Dutch
island of Java in Indonesia during World War
Two.
1951 - In Australia, Menzies government ’s
Communist Party Dissolution Act is declared
invalid by the High Court after challenge by
Communist Party and 10 unions.
1956 - Archbishop Makarios, whom the
British suspected of terrorism, is deported from
Cyprus to the Seychelles.
uWest Coast yesteryear
uToday in history
Amerigo Vespucci, Italian explorer for whom
America is named (1451-1512); Vyacheslav
Mikhailovich Molotov, Soviet foreign
minister (1890-1986); Samuel Barber, US
composer (1910-1981); Mickey Spillane, US
author (1918-2006); Lloyd Price,
US singer (1933-); Yuri Gagarin,
Russian astronaut, first man in space
(1934-1968); Mickey Gilley, US
country singer (1936-); Raul Julia,
Puerto Rican actor (1940-1994);
Bobby Fischer, US chess player
(1943-2008); Linda Fiorentino,
US actor (1958-); Juliette Binoche,
French actress (1964-); Tony Lockett, former
Australian footballer (1966-); Emmanuel
Lewis, US actor (1971-); Lucas Neill,
Australian soccer player (1978-).
“ It is the nature of man to rise to greatness
if greatness is expected of him.” — John
Steinbeck, American author (1902-1968).
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”
— Psalm 23.1
Greymouth and
the Grey district is
to become a major
shareholder in the
Greymouth Evening Star. It will also have an
interest in the Dispatch Foundry and in at least
two leasehold properties in Greymouth.
The last member of a prominent Greymouth
family, Miss Viola Kettle who died last
December, has bequeathed a substantial
portion of her estate to a trust set up here to
give relief from poverty and hardship to people
in the Grey district.
The trust is to be known as the W R Kettle
Trust, after Miss Kettle’s father who was
an early Mayor of Greymouth, where he
conducted a grocery business. The trust may
have a basic book value of up to £20,000.
“This is a very fine gesture on the part of a
late citizen of this area to give so generously
to the district in which her family made its
livelihood,” said Greymouth Mayor Mr F W
Baillie today, commenting on the establishment
of the WR Kettle Trust.
The Reefton District High School will
officially change its stature tomorrow when it
will become the Inangahua College. A small
opening ceremony to mark the change will
be performed by the chairman of the Nelson
Education Board, Mr G Spier.
However, although the school will officially
change its name tomorrow, it has been
operating under Inangahua College since the
beginning of the school year when the roll was
sufficient to make it a full post primary school,
the principal Mr A R Lowrey said today. The
present roll is 202, and to reach post-primary
status the roll must exceed 200, he stated.
uToday’s birthdays
uFood for thought
uFaith
Printed and published by the
Greymouth Evening Star Co Limited
3 Werita Street, PO Box 3, Greymouth
Phone
03 769 7900 (office)
769 7913 (editorial)
768 6205 (fax)
office@greystar.co.nz
Editor
Paul Madgwick
editor@greystar.co.nz
Sports Editor
Viv Logie
sport@greystar.co .nz
Chief Reporter
Laura Mills
lauram@greystar.co .nz
Reporters
03 769 7913
Hokitika
03 755 8422
Reporters
Ulysses S
Grant
1965
Bobby
Fischer
On-line influence
How You Tube changed the world
I
n late 2005, when You Tube was
just a few months old, one of
its co-founders announced that
the site’s users were consuming
the equivalent of an entire
Blockbuster store each month.
Today, 300 hours of video are uploaded to
the site every minute. And Blockbuster?
Well, kids, Blockbuster was a video rental
shop offering films on DVD and VHS.
VHS tapes were like giant cassettes.
Cassettes were . . . never mind.
The on-line video behemoth has become
the world’s third most-visited website,
after Google and Facebook. According
to Jawed Karim, he and two of his Paypal
colleagues, Chad Hurley and Steve
Chen, launched the site after becoming
frustrated that they couldn’t find footage
of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami and, er,
Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” at
the Super Bowl the same year.
This high-and-low ethos is baked into
You Tube’s culture. It has been lauded for
promoting democracy and re-energising
education, while being disparaged for
its endless cat videos and nasty user
comments.
What is beyond debate is You Tube’s
influence (spotted by a farsighted Google
in 2006, when it bought the site for
$US1.65 billion). Almost anyone can
upload almost anything to You Tube, for
free, and be in with a chance of reaching
its one billion monthly users — whether
activists, terrorists, politicians or pop stars.
It has changed our world.
Check out our playlist of all the You
Tube stars who are changing the world:
Celebrity
Justin Bieber looks into the camera,
raises his eyebrows and says, “I was found
on You Tube.” He narrows his eyes. “ I
think I was detrimental to my own career.”
This footage, of the teen star’s statement
in an assault case filed against him by a
paparazzo, was uploaded to You Tube by
fans in March 2014.
Although his lawyer corrected Bieber’s
“detrimental” for “instrumental”, the slip
was fitting: Bieber, once the prodigal
Canadian talent discovered on You Tube
aged 12, had become gossip column
fodder.
Back in 2010, three years after his
mother posted a video of him performing
in a local talent contest, the doe-eyed,
floppy-haired Bieber sold out New York’s
Madison Square Garden in 22 minutes.
Innumerable artists have since followed
Bieber’s lead, using You Tube to share their
work directly with an on-line audience,
leaving talent agents and other traditional
gatekeepers to fame scrambling to catch
up. The once-mighty film studios and
artists and repertoire men have had to get
used to a celebrity landscape in which they
are no longer the all-powerful star makers.
By nurturing a devoted audience on You
Tube — the so-called Beliebers — Bieber
also paved the way for a new breed of
celebrity: the intensely accessible and
“normal” person who can earn a six-figure
salary by sharing their thoughts and
hobbies on-line.
Zoe Sugg, better known as Zoella,
launched her You Tube channel in 2009.
She was a “haul girl”, a genre of You
Tubers that unveil their new clothing and
beauty buys from their bedrooms, like a
best friend. Now 24, Sugg has more than
7.6 million subscribers across two You
Tube channels. They helped make her
2014 novel, Girl On-line, the highest-
selling for a debut author since records
began.
The first You Tube celebrities emerged
from viral one-hit-wonder videos: like
Charlie Davies-Carr, the baby who
famously bit his brother’s finger in 2007
and earned his parents hundreds of
thousands of dollars from advertising
revenue and merchandise in the process.
Tabatha Bundesen gave up her day job to
manage her pet, Grumpy Cat. The animal
earned more than Gwyneth Paltrow last
year.
There are You Tube celebrities in all
manner of niche fields. DC Toys Collector
is an anonymous “unboxer”; she unwraps
new toys. Her video of five Angry Birds
eggs being opened has been viewed 90
million times. Tanya Burr has earned 2.7
million subscribers by giving makeup tips.
Nearly half a million people have watched
Abby Vapes showing how to smoke an
e-cigarette like a dragon. Others, such as
the blue-eyed Brit Marcus Butler, (3.3
million subscribers), and American LGBT
advocate, Tyler Oakley (6.2 million), are
famous just for talking.
Beneath the often goofy personas —
23-year-old Butler’s most popular video
involves him and Oakley sucking on
helium balloons — lies steely business
sense and an indomitable work ethic.
“ You Tubers are the most diligent,
hardworking people you could meet, who
have doggedly pursued a creative outlet
that has turned into a huge media concern
over many, many years,” explains Dom
Smales, founder of Gleam Talent agency,
which looks after Suggs, Butler and other
social media stars.
While the music industry used to be
sniffy about You Tube talent, record
labels now fight over musicians who can
effortlessly shift records to their on-line
fanbases. “ They’ve done the work, they
have the fans and they’re super powerful,”
explains Meridith Valiando Rojas, co-
owner of DigiTours Media. “If you have
the audience, you have all the leverage.”
Bieber’s manager, Allison Kaye, says
his fans “feel a certain ownership of
him, because they feel like they found
him even before Scooter (Braun, his
agent) found him.” But, just as You
Tube launched Bieber, it was ready and
willing to bring about his downfall.
TMZ, the Hollywood gossip site, has
released videos of nearly all of Bieber’s
misdemeanours on its You Tube channel:
him urinating in a restaurant kitchen,
getting arrested, even footage from inside
his prison cell.
The 24/7 scrutiny of modern celebrities
has been driven, in large part, by You
Tube, where anybody with a smartphone
can upload footage of the famous. The
competition for exclusive imagery among
paparazzi has consequently become savage.
In 2013, a photographer was fatally run
over trying to get a shot of Bieber after his
Ferrari was pulled over by police.
You Tube may have increased the
range and pace of celebrity careers, but it
suggests that the public’s relationship with
the famous has stayed the same: we build
people only to tear them down again.
The lure of the new is as intoxicating as
ever. Some believe the stars of Vine, an
app that allows users to upload six-second
videos, are leaving You Tubers in the dust.
Andrew Bachelor, known to his 10.2
million Vine followers as King Bach, is a
New York Film Academy drop-out. His
slapstick videos have landed him a role
on MTV 2’s improvised comedy show
Wild n’ O ut. Meanwhile, Jack and Jack,
two 18-year-old rappers from Nebraska
without a record deal, routinely dominate
the iTunes download charts, thanks to
their five million followers on Vine.
Shane Dawson, a veteran You Tube
comedian with six million subscribers
and a burgeoning music and film career,
complained to The New Yorker recently:
“ Vine makes me kind of sad — I’m
ner vous that will turn into what content
is. ”
You Tube may have transformed what it
means to be a celebrity, but the next big
thing is surely just around the corner.
Video games
Ten years ago, few predicted that gamers
would be the most-followed people on the
fledgling video site. But You Tube’s most
popular channel of all is that of Pew Die
Pie — aka Felix Kjellberg — a 25-year-
old Swede who offers profane, hyperactive
commentary while playing horror and
comedy games. Pew Die Pie’s channel has
33 million subscribers and counting.
To put that in context: if you combined
Rihanna and One Direction’s subscribers
— the two most popular music acts on the
website — you would still be four million
teeny-boppers short of Pew Die Pie’s “Bro
Army ”.
The concept — watching other people
playing video games — has many baffled.
But, as Mark Turpin, the chief executive
of theYogscast (21 million subscribers)
points out, “video is the best way to find
out about a video game — to watch it
being played. The layer on top of that is
the personalities — entertainers — people
want to spend time with.”
When the Yogscast ’s founders, Lewis
Brindley and Simon Lane, started making
video guides to the World of Warcraft
game in 2008, cultivating a multimillion-
dollar media empire collecting more than
120 million views a month was not part of
the plan.
But You Tube’s gamers engage their
audience as if they were friends. Their
audience love them for it, regardless of
what Variety, the entertainment industry
magazine, may think. (It called PewDiePie
“aggressively stupid”.)
The rise of video streaming on You
Tube has led to a major rethink in new
game consoles. Both Sony ’s Playstation 4
and Microsoft’s Xbox One now offer the
ability to share game play on-line.
The industry is becoming more savvy
about using You Tube to its advantage.
Playstation Access, for example, is a You
Tube channel offering videos such as
“six multi-player games that will tear
your friendship apart”, largely free of the
corporate stuffiness you might expect
from an “official” source. They are a clear
attempt at capturing the spirit of gamer
channels.
Getting featured on a prominent You
Tube channel can catapult obscure games
to mainstream success. In 2012 the British
independent developer Mike Bithell
released Thomas Was Alone, a minimalist
puzzle-platform game that saw reasonable
sales. Then it was featured by You Tube
channels Nerd Cubed and Total Biscuit.
“ In one week it had doubled the amount
of money the game had made,” Bithell
said, taking it “from a hobby to quit-the-
day-job type stuff ”.
When Bithell moved on to his new
project, Volume, did he think about
making the game “ You Tube-friendly”?
“ Yeah, I think it would be pretty foolish
to make a game nowadays without at least
considering it,” says Bithell.
Arguably because of Pew Die Pie’s
influence, there has been a small boom
in independently developed comedy
games — see Goat Simulator — while
the industry looks to be embracing
horror again. Creative Assembly’s Alien:
Isolation is a first-person chiller with a
distinct lack of guns. Publisher Sega will
have been well aware of the genre’s rise on
You Tube.
Learning
“ If this does not blow your mind, then
you have no emotion,” Salman Khan said.
It’s a suitably provocative come-on from a
You Tube superstar. But he is talking about
a maths equation.
Khan is on a mission to bring a world-
class, customised education to anyone,
anywhere, for free. To do that, he has spent
a good part of the last decade in the closet
— literally — making about 5000 videos
about maths and science.
A decade ago, he was a young hedge
fund analyst with a 12-year-old cousin
who had fallen behind in maths. He was
in Boston, she was in New Orleans, so
he began tutoring her remotely, using
Yahoo!’s Doodle notepad.
Soon, he started making videos. In them,
Khan talks through a concept — perhaps
fractions or long division — with the aid
of bright numbers on a black screen. His
voice is earnest yet informal, the videos
are spare and efficient; none is longer than
10 minutes. They feel exactly like getting
a private lesson from a whizz of an older
brother.
His cousin loved them. “ When you’re
trying to get your brain around a new
concept, the very last thing you need is
another human being saying: ‘Do you
understand this?’” he says. On video, his
cousin could pause the lesson, or re-watch
the parts she didn’t understand.
In 2006, a friend convinced him to post
his videos on You Tube. Within weeks,
strangers were watching the videos, too. “ I
was getting letters from people all over the
planet, saying how my videos had changed
their life,” he says.
Five years later, he quit his job to
work full-time on Khan Academy, the
non-profit organisation he founded
off the back of his You Tube success.
The 75-strong team is now based in
California. The lesson style hasn’t
changed much, but Khan Academy
now includes videos by experts in the
humanities, too.
Today, Khan Academy has 15 million
registered students in 190 countries. The
You Tube channel has racked up over 500
million views. Khan’s vision for the future
has been endorsed by everyone from Bill
Gates to Barack Obama; he’s working
with institutions like Stanford University
and the Tate in Britain.
While Khan is perhaps You Tube’s
biggest success in the field of learning, the
platform is saturated with instructional
videos. There are You Tube tutorials for
changing a light bulb, assembling baby
buggies, learning the guitar. Shawn
Mendes, the 16-year-old Canadian singer
hailed as the “next Justin Bieber”, taught
himself guitar entirely via You Tube.
Watching a video isn’t just quicker than
decoding a manual — according to Khan,
it’s making us smarter. He argues that, by
giving us a basic level of knowledge, they
help us get more out of experts.
For example, he says: “In the old days,
your doctor had to give you all your
information. Nowadays, if you think
you have something, you spend an hour
on some combination of You Tube and
Google, and you become pretty smart
on the material, so when you go to your
doctors, it’s you saying, ‘Look, I saw this
one video, and it mentioned the role of
this hormone — is that true? Or can you
tell me more about it?’”
Increasingly, traditional educational
establishments are embracing You Tube,
too. Universities around the world are
experimenting with video-based learning
via massive open on-line courses, or
Moocs. While there has been some debate
over whether the availability of lectures
on-line devalues universities, almost
everyone agrees that video tutorials have a
role to play in teaching.
Driving the lecture out of the classroom
— as Khan would like — is hardly a
move towards hypermodernity, he argues.
Rather, it takes us back to the Socratic
method of tutorials, prizing critical
thinking over rote learning.
Who would have thought it? You Tube
promoting the classical education.
Advertising
The internet was meant to kill off
advertising. Instead of sitting through
annoying commercials during television
broadcasts, we would go on-line to watch
uninterrupted dramas, comedies and silly
c lips. Curiously, though, last year’s 10
most-watched (non-music) videos on You
Tube included four adverts.
We appear to actively seek out adverts
on You Tube, be it the titillating 50
Shades of Grey trailer (48 million views
and counting), the moving #LikeAGirl
campaign (56 million) or, occasionally, the
homemade so-bad-they ’re-good ones.
“ In the old days, you would put
something on television and pretty
much force people to watch it,” George
Prest, executive creative director at the
ad agency R/GA London, said. “ These
days you have to pull people towards it,
which they will only do if they find it
engaging.”
Bizarrely, considering our supposed
shortening attention spans, adverts on
You Tube are longer — the 30-second
television spot has morphed into a three-
minute on-line film, with some brands
hosting lavish events to celebrate its
unveiling. The TV ad has, in effect, become
a trailer for the longer, on-line version.
In some instances brands, such as Evian,
make adverts exclusively for the internet.
The so-called millennial generation
watches far less television than their
parents, in large part thanks to platforms
like You Tube. That makes You Tube
critical for reaching them.
“Three or four years ago, humour was
the category that was most prevalent
in branded content,” says Scott Button,
chief executive of video ad tech company
Unruly. “But it ’s the hardest to succeed
with, especially with a global brand,
because responses to humour vary so
much. If you look at content today,
you’ll see a lot more warmth, happiness,
inspiration, exhilaration. ”
Some brands have more or less
abandoned traditional adverts in favour
of partnering with video bloggers on You
Tube. These teenagers and 20-somethings
uploading homemade videos offer
advertisers guaranteed audiences that
dwarf what they ’d reach on their own.
For example, major beauty brands have
achieved a collective 511 million video
views — a fraction of the 14.9 billion
racked up by beauty vloggers.
No wonder British clothing chain
TopShop partnered with Zoella (seven
million subscribers) last year. When she
suggested her viewers click on the Top
Shop ad in her video for a chance to win
a gift voucher, 40% of her viewers clicked.
The click-through rate on a traditional
banner advert is about 0.1% .
But traditional adverts can still do well.
One of the most viewed adverts of all time
on You Tube is Evian’s “Rollerbabies” —
racking up over 100 million views in a
year. It is part of a long-running campaign
by the bottled water company that started
in the late 1990s, before You Tube even
existed.
The baby campaign ticks some key on-
line boxes — it is funny, it is cute and it
is global (no one ever speaks, babies just
gurgle or dance).
“ You Tube has forced people to be more
entertaining and to listen to customers
more.” Prest said. Rather than kill off the
ad industry, it has given it an injection of
new life. — AP-PA—AAP
You Tubers are the most diligent, hardworking people you could meet.